BRADLEY CONTEMPLATED THE BOSTON POLICE OFFICER SITTING opposite his desk. To the superintendent, the officer looked comically big in his chair as compared to the countless young boys who had sat there, their skinny buttocks covering only half the seat. But there was nothing comical about what the officer had spent the last twenty minutes telling him.
Bradley had asked all the questions he could think of, requested clarification on every element that he considered unclear, and now the next move was his. But he was loath to make it. He wanted not just a few moments to gather his thoughts, but an hour or two to ruminate on all this new information. He wanted this officer to go away and come back tomorrow, when he had absorbed everything and made sense of it.
Without the luxury of that time, he did his best to review what he’d been told. A woman, obsessed with a crime that she’d witnessed perpetrated against her husband that summer, had been contacting the police department incessantly to determine their progress and had given them more than one lead that had amounted to nothing. She had attended the performance at Faneuil Hall the previous day and recognized one of the Farm School boys who caused the cacophony with the cymbals as the perpetrator. After lengthy conversations with several officers and the commissioner, she convinced them to apprehend this boy.
“The one that was fighting that lost his cap?” Bradley asked, although he had already asked this earlier.
“Yessir. That’s how she could see his face.” The officer’s finger combed his sizable handlebar mustache with remarkable patience. Perhaps he was enjoying being away from Boston, thought Bradley. Perhaps the two of them could sit here indefinitely, each one content to put off the future. Mrs. Bradley could bring them tea, the afternoon shadows would grow long, they could chat about the prospects of the Beaneaters this year. Bradley could inquire after the officer’s wife.
After a few moments, the officer cleared his throat. Like a bubble, Bradley’s fantasy popped, and the reality of what he had to do now pressed down upon his shoulders, a python resting there that he would have to carry around on the island as they looked for the boy the police officer needed to arrest.
Charles threw his remaining two sausage links to Lucifer rather than breaking them into pieces for training rewards. He was too angry to concentrate on training today. He and Aidan had not spoken since they’d boarded the boat at City Point yesterday.
“I don’t need either one of ya,” Aidan had stated, pushing through the line to sit between Cantrell and Poole. Charles had shuffled among the other boys so that he’d ended up on the end of the bench, where he’d stared out at the water for the entire trip, wishing for rough waters that would rock the boat.
The barn was so cold that Charles couldn’t feel his fingertips. He wiped his greasy fingers on his trousers and shoved his hands under his arms to warm them. Lucifer was busy twitching his head to the side, using his back molars to break the sausage apart. Son of a bitch, he thought to himself. Lucifer stopped chewing for a moment and looked at Charles. Perhaps he’d actually said that out loud.
Where the hell did Aidan get off not talking to him? Shouldn’t it be him not talking to Aidan? Who couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut for one minute once he got to nattering on with his Mick pal? A slipup, he could understand. But to tell that lousy bogtrotter and then to keep it a secret? For who knew how long? It went against everything he and Aidan had agreed on before they came to the island.
Charles rose abruptly, and Lucifer skittered to parts unknown in the barn. He was filled with a sudden resolve to confront Aidan, to make him admit that he had done a terrible thing. If that meant additional punishments from Bradley, so be it. Because it might take a bit of pounding to make Aidan see things clearly.
He stormed out of the barn and up the hill. Starlight, that’s where he’d look first. Starlight, where Aidan didn’t even belong, probably playing a duet of “Danny Boy.” He would break that clarinet over Aidan’s goddamn head.
So intent was he to get to Cottage Row that he was only yards away from the superintendent and the police officer when he finally saw them. Seconds before, he would have sworn that nothing could have deterred him from his purpose. But when he saw the brass buttons of Boston’s Finest, buttons he had trained himself to spot from much farther distances, his plan evaporated like ether.
To run away seemed attractive, desirable, the best possible thing to do, but his legs didn’t agree. And really, where could he go? It’s a goddamn ISLAND, he thought to himself, and he almost laughed. They’d come to the one place where there wasn’t any place they could run away to.
Bradley and the officer must have spotted him before he had seen them, because they were on an intercept course. Charles pondered the date. Mid-October. About three months they’d made it here. That was something, at least. He’d had his first kiss and became a lawyer. It was more than he had expected.
Bradley planted his feet in front of Charles, the officer by his side. “Master Weston,” he stated, his face a portrait of displeasure.
“Sir,” said Charles, straightening his spine. If this was going to happen, he would go out with some dignity. No pleading, pissing his pants, asking what was going to happen to him. He’d leave with his head up.
“Where,” Bradley asked, “is your brother?”
Charles froze. Aidan. Not him. Aidan and not him. He stopped breathing for several seconds while his mind attempted to rearrange the old reality into the new.
“Charles?”
He had to warn Aidan. Aidan was likely to start babbling facts and truths that would damn them for eternity. He had to make sure Aidan shut it until they could figure this out.
“Not sure, sir. Haven’t been keeping track of him. But I thought I saw him by the flower beds. He’s always there.”
“In late October? I sincerely doubt that.” Bradley turned to the officer. “Let’s check the cottages.”
They left Charles as if he no longer existed and headed toward Cottage Row. Charles followed close behind, but they seemed oblivious to his presence. Without knocking, Bradley opened the door to Laurel. Charles calculated whether he could walk over to Starlight and slip inside without anyone noticing.
“Arthur Weston?” said the officer in a deep baritone, projecting his question into the cottage.
Charles moved in front of Bradley so he could see into Laurel. There, at the warped wooden table with Tink’s folded-up geography exam jammed under one leg to stabilize it, sat Aidan, pen still dipped in his inkpot, mouth ajar, still as a statue. The wind whipped in through the open door, lifting the papers on the table and floating them to the floor, and Charles saw that he had been writing to Maeve.